Thought provoking exercises

All the answers are given inside this page, but it will require
some lateral and/or logical thinking to find them (and no, emailing me
isn't the answer)! I recommend you try to answer the questions and if
you can't figure out how to find the answers based on my statement
above, you can look at another
hint.

Most of the answers here require lateral thinking, i.e., thinking
outside the box, but some require straight logical and/or mathematical
thinking, and in still others, the answers require realising that the
questions are misleading.

1. There is a man who lives on the top floor of a very tall building.
Everyday he gets the elevator down to the ground floor to leave the
building to go to work. Upon returning from work though, he can only
travel half way up in the lift and has to walk the rest of the way
unless it's raining! Why?

This is probably the best known and most celebrated of all lateral
thinking puzzles. It is a true classic. Although there are many
possible solutions which fit the initial conditions, only the
canonical answer is truly satisfying.

2. A man and his son are in a car accident. The father dies on the
scene, but the child is rushed to the hospital. When he arrives the
surgeon says, "I can't operate on this boy, he is my son!" How can
this be?

3. A man is wearing black. Black shoes, socks, trousers, jumper,
gloves and balaclava. He is walking down a black street with all the
street lamps off. A black car is coming towards him with its light off
but somehow manages to stop in time. How did the driver see the man?

4. One day Kerry celebrated her birthday. Two days later her older
twin brother, Terry, celebrated his birthday. How?

5. Why is it better to have round manhole covers than square ones?
This is logical rather than lateral, but it is a good puzzle that can
be solved by lateral thinking techniques. It is supposedly used by a
very well known software company as an interview question for
prospective employees.

6. A man went to a party and drank some of the punch. He then left
early. Everyone else at the party who drank the punch subsequently
died of poisoning. Why did the man not die?

7. A man died and went to Heaven. There were thousands of other people
there. They were all naked and all looked as they did at the age of
21. He looked around to see if there was anyone he recognized. He saw
a couple and he knew immediately that they were Adam and Eve (from the
Bible). How did he know?

8. A woman had two sons who were born on the same hour of the same day
of the same year (almost at the same moment). But they were not
twins. How could this be so?

9. A man walks into a bar and asks the barman for a glass of water.
The barman pulls out a gun and points it at the man. The man says
"Thank you" and walks out. Explain.

This puzzle claims to be the best of the genre. It is simple in its
statement, absolutely baffling and yet with a completely satisfying
solution. Most people struggle very hard to solve this one yet they
like the answer when they hear it or have the satisfaction of figuring
it out.

10. A man without eyes sees plums on a tree. He neither takes
plums nor leaves plums. How can this be?

This is a very special question for me; people who know me
personally have already been provided with a huge clue.

11. Jack and Jill are found dead, lying on the floor in the living
room of a house, in a puddle of water. How did they die?

12. A man is found dead in an empty field with a pack strapped to his
back. How did he die?

13. A man is found hanging in a completely empty warehouse high off
the ground. How did the man manage to hang himself.

14. A frog is dead in the centre of a pond, surrounded by ten feet of
water on all directions. How can the frog get to land?

15. You have three lights in a box, each of which is connected to
a switch outside the box, i.e., one switch one light. The box is
closed. You need to figure out which switch to corresponds to which
light and you can open the box only once (and you can't manipulate the
switches after you open the box). How do you do this?

16. A pot of gold is on a square island surrounded by a chasm 10
metres wide and of infinite depth. You have two 9.8 metre poles. How
do you get across to the pot of gold and get back with it.

17. Mel Colly stared through the dirty soot smeared window on the
64th floor of the office tower. Overcome with depression he slid the
window open and jumped through it. It was a sheer drop outside the
building to the ground. Miraculously after he landed he was completely
unhurt. Since there was nothing to cushion his fall or slow his
descent, how could he have survived?

18. A man is hiking up a snowy mountain, he comes across a
cabin. Inside the cabin is a small fire and two dead men. How did they
die? (They did not burn to death.)

19. Three guys walk into a hotel, and they're going to split the
cost of a room. The room is $30. They each kick in $10 and head up to
their room. The manager gets wind of it and tells the clerk the room
is only $25. He hands five $1 bills to the bell hop and tells him to
go refund the guys' money. On the way up to the room, the bell hop
gets to thinking, as bell hops are wont to do, and says to himself,
"No way can three guys split $5, I'm going to help out." He stuffs $2
in his pocket, knocks on the door, gives each guy back a buck and
heads back downstairs to the desk, glowing in the warmth of a job well
done. So now each guy has paid $9. $9 times 3 is $27 plus $2 the
bell hop stole--only $29! Where is the other buck?